Ransom: Dead Ringers MC Book 2 Page 3

  “It’s gonna get better.”

  “Easy for you to say. You’re fixing to be a dad. Soon you’ll just be another dude in a polo shirt and a minivan who rides motorbikes on the weekends.”

  I punch him in the shoulder and laugh. Considering my whole world, my whole identity, including my career as a mechanic, is built upon this very club, he knows he’s talking a bunch of bullshit. “You know having a kid ain’t gonna change anything with the club. If anything, it’ll make me a better brother. I don’t want to bring my kid up in a club with a bunch of bullshit going on all the time. I want more for my own than I got for myself.”

  “You and me both,” he says with a sigh. He’s been living in this house since the day he was born, raised by the men who are now our officers. He’s been through it all, and even though it’s all he knows, he’s even starting to see the need for a change around here.

  “I’m calling it a night.” I walk down the hallway to my room in the clubhouse, feeling a little sentimental for a minute. As soon as I found out about the baby, I put an offer in on a nice little house just outside of town, out in the country. It needs a lot of work, so we’re staying here at the clubhouse for now, and I guess a little bit of what Driller said is true. Things are going to change. This club put a roof over my head when I had absolutely nothing. When I was at my very lowest. My sponsor, Romeo, took me in, taught me how to tear apart engines, made me into a mechanic and a good man. Leaving this place that brought me so much is going to be hard.

  I quietly unlock my bedroom door, swinging it open softly, and listen for Carley’s soft snore in the darkness. I undress quickly, throwing my clothes in the hamper as I walk into the bathroom and turn on the light, trying not to wake her.

  I look over my shoulder as I turn on the faucet in the shower and get this foreboding feeling that something isn’t quite right. It’s too quiet. She usually leaves the TV on when she falls asleep, and it’s off. The only light in the bedroom is the light of the moon, and the glare it casts across the bed shows me that Carley isn’t there. The comforter is still pulled up tight and tucked in around the sides, just like I like it.

  “What the fuck?” I stammer, shutting off the faucet and stepping back into my jeans. I pick up my cellphone and call her number, but it goes straight to voicemail.

  I flick on the overhead lights and everything seems to be in place. Her dirty clothes are still in the pile in the corner, her makeup spread across my dresser. Her purse even hangs from the bedpost.

  I storm down the hallway out into the bar. A couple of the old heads are shooting a game of pool while Gwen leans up against the bar, disinterestedly scrolling through her cellphone. I stand in front of her, and she looks up at me and starts blinking, sheer terror in her eyes.

  “Where is she?” I ask.

  “I’m not your bitch’s keeper, Ransom,” she says, jumping back about a foot.

  “Yeah, but you are one of her best friends.” I lean over the bar and stare her right in the eye.

  “I didn’t realize you were back,” she says. “Why don’t you have a beer. I’m sure she’ll be here any minute.”

  “Where is she?” I ask, loud enough that everyone stops what they’re doing and stares.

  She gulps and cringes. “She left with Stoney a little bit ago. She wanted to go to Vinnie’s and get you something nice. A surprise tattoo.”

  “A fucking what?” I stammer. “She’s pregnant! You didn’t think that was a bad idea?”

  She shakes her head and shrugs. “Ransom, you know I love you, baby, but I can’t be watching Carley twenty-four seven. I got enough shit of my own to deal with. I’m not letting her drink, I’m not giving her drugs. Hell, I don’t even let her have coffee anymore if I’m around! I’m trying to be as encouraging as possible, but she’s a grown woman.”

  My blood is boiling. I know Gwen isn’t her keeper, but I shouldn’t have to be either. That little child growing inside her should be enough to make her want better for herself. For us. Keeping that baby safe and healthy is the only thing I care about. How could she be so selfish?

  “I gotta go,” I say.

  “Oh, come on, son.” Old Nasty, our vice president and Driller’s dad, pulls up a barstool next to me and pats his hand on the bar. “No good’s gonna come out of you going over there and starting shit. Vinnie knows what he’s doing. You know as much as I do he wouldn’t be putting ink on her skin if he didn’t think it was safe. You know how women get. She’s probably so gooped up on baby hormones she isn’t thinking straight.”

  “You’re a fucking pig, Nasty,” Gwen says.

  He pushes his nose up and oinks at her. “You gotta be patient with her, Ransom. She’s going through shit we can’t even imagine. You go over there screaming and hollering and she’s going to take off running. You know that ain’t good for the baby.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I say. “I’m just going to go over there and check on her. I don’t want her driving home by herself.”

  “Jesus, son, why don’t you just wrap her in bubble wrap and call it a day.”

  I roll my eyes and stumble out the front door. I’m trying not to see red, but I don’t understand how she could be so careless. I throw my leg over my bike, slapping myself in the face a couple times, trying to feel something other than complete rage wash over me.

  I know Carley isn’t exactly the best decision maker, but what the fuck is Stoney doing with my old lady? Why the fuck would my president, who I’m supposed to trust with my life, do something like take my pregnant woman to get a tattoo? I don’t even know who to trust anymore.

  I take a couple deep breaths, willing myself to try and see her side of things. Knowing what Old Nasty said is right—I gotta be patient with her. Neither one of us saw this baby coming, and if I’m going to spend the rest of my life with her, if she’s going to raise my child, I’m gonna have to learn to compromise. I’m gonna have to learn to get in her head.

  I drive off into the night down the long dirt road and into the city, pledging to be the calmest, coolest motherfucker on the planet. If I want to be a better man, tonight is going to be the night I start making good on that promise.

  6

  I park in front of the shop. The windows out front are all dark, the sign on the door flipped to closed, and for a minute I wonder if maybe I passed Carley on my way here. Sometimes Vinnie does work for us after hours in the back, but usually that ends in a whole lot of drinking, a whole lot of drugging, and usually a whole lot of other bullshit I don’t want to imagine the mother of my child wrapped up in.

  I pull on the front door, praying that it’s locked, but it isn’t.

  The place is fairly quiet as I step inside, the only light coming from the back room. The place smells like the inside of a bong, the smoke so thick I cough a little in my mouth.

  As I approach the room, my stomach instantly turns. I don’t want to believe what I’m hearing, the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind, but Carley’s shrill wails and Stoney’s grunts are undeniable. I can feel the bile rising in the back of my mouth.

  I’m so stunned I don’t even know what my next move is supposed to be. Any other man and I’d fucking drop him to the ground. Split his head open. Make him pay. But this is the president of my club. And this woman, she’s the mother of my child.

  I throw the door open and stand there, not even sure where to look. It’s all a shit show. Between Carley bent over the table, her tits flopping in the air, and Stoney’s gnarled face, I almost regret being here, like this very scene is something I could’ve gone my entire life without seeing. I don’t know who I feel the most betrayed by, but I freeze in my steps, not even knowing how to process the situation.

  Vinnie backs away from her the instant he sees me, putting one hand in the air and using the other to zip up his jeans.

  Stoney just turns his head and smiles. “You want in on this, boy? She is yours, ain’t she?”

  I keep waiting for somebody to wake me up and tell me I’m dream
ing. I keep hoping someone will tell me “it’s not what it looks like” and have some perfectly plausible explanation for the fact that my pregnant girlfriend is getting spit roasted by the president of my MC and his best friend, and nobody seems to care that I’m witnessing it.

  “Fuck you all,” I growl. “What the fuck, Carley?! You’re the mother of my child.”

  “Grow up,” Stoney says, pumping in and out of her splayed legs. “You think there ever was a child? This bitch was manipulating you, isn’t that right, sweetie? Classic club slut move. I didn’t think you were that fucking dumb, son.”

  “Is that true?” I shout, looking Carley square in the eye. She looks like she’s all fucked up, not really here, and for a moment I wonder if maybe she was drugged, manipulated, if maybe Stoney really is more of a monster than I could even imagine.

  She looks at me and laughs, bucking her hips in motion with Stoney’s thrusts. “Get out of here, Ransom.”

  “Is this really what you want, Carley? You honestly want to throw away everything we have?” My body tenses, and hate isn’t even a strong enough word for the way I feel as the blood starts to boil in my veins. Everybody warned me about her. Everyone I know told me she was just a club slut, that she’d never care about anybody but herself.

  She pushes Stoney away and sits up on the table, and seeing her naked flesh all out there for everyone to look at makes me want to vomit. I’m utterly repulsed. “Everything we have? Take the baby out of the equation and tell me what we have, Ransom. Tell me that you truly want to spend the rest of your life with me. Tell me you love me no matter what.”

  Stoney’s grinning from ear to ear. “There comes a time in every man’s life where he needs to find out the hard way, boy. A slut’s a slut, ain’t that right? One day you’re gonna thank your Uncle Stoney for saving you a world of hurt.”

  “You’re fucking evil,” I say to her. I clench my fist and pace over to Stoney, ready to knock his dentures so far down his throat he shits them out for the next two weeks. “And you...”

  “You best step back, son,” he growls. His eyes are clear and his voice is low. I’ve seen this stance before. Most men on the receiving side of this take off running before they can find out what happens next. “You do know who I am, right? I own your sorry ass. What’s yours is mine, and I will take whatever I want until the day I die. Don’t you ever fucking forget it.”

  I know I could take him right here, right now, probably without much effort at all. I’m stronger, I’m quicker, and I’m mad as hell. I could send him to meet his maker with one punch to the face. The only thing holding me back is the aftermath. Is it worth losing everything I have? Do I really want to turn my entire brotherhood against me? Right now, it’s three against one, and taking out the president of the club is pretty much an instant life sentence.

  I slowly lower my fist and step back.

  “What are you gonna do now, boy? You gonna run home and tell your little friends you caught your slut doing what sluts do? You know what they’re gonna say? I fucking told you so. Because we did. I told you so, boy. I told you so about this one, and I am never wrong. So why don’t you thank me, shut your damn mouth, and get the fuck out of here?”

  Carley slaps her hand over her mouth, squeezing some tears out of her eyes, as if she just realized what was going on. I don’t even feel one hint of remorse for her as she tries to use her arms to cover her body. I’m not here to save her anymore.

  Maybe being a good man isn’t in the cards for me.

  I spit on the floor and turn for the door.

  “Say it, son,” Stoney calls after me. “Thank me.”

  I throw my middle finger up in the air as I walk out into the night.

  7

  Annabella:

  The winter has definitely not been kind to me. Business at the Hideaway is slower than ever before, and the nights are long and lonely in this big old farmhouse.

  I wake up in the middle of the night, my body so cold I feel like my fingers are going to snap off if I bend them. Even in two pairs of pants, a thermal turtleneck, a hoodie, and tucked under a pile of blankets, it’s almost like I left all the windows open. I grumble and roll over, knowing I need to feed the wood stove. I probably should’ve done that before I downed all that vodka, but I drank the vodka to get me psyched up to feed the stove. Once it was gone, I was plenty warm, but I forgot about why I drank it in the first place.

  “You’re a hot fucking mess, Annabella,” I grumble as my feet hit the floor. Even Juniper doesn’t want to get out from under the covers. My head is pounding and my mouth feels like I licked a cactus, dry and prickly. I will myself down the steps, knowing if I don’t get this stove fed my pipes are going to freeze, and I’m going to be in an even bigger mess than I am right now.

  Every day bleeds into the next—work, drink, sit around the house waiting for something to happen, anything to happen. The only thing that ever happens seems to be a series of self-inflicted mini disasters. Stuff my mom would take care of is falling apart, reminding me how badly I miss her. I keep hoping one day I’ll wake up and Kid will call me, give me the green light, tell me it’s time to put our plan into action. It’s the only thing I have to look forward to.

  I step into my boots and pull my gloves over my hands, teetering back and forth to steady myself as I pull on the back door. Maybe I’m not hungover yet. Maybe I’m a little drunker than I assumed.

  I don’t even know why I bother. Every day is the same thing. Living to survive, but what for?

  Wouldn’t it be so much easier to just let the cold take me? To lay down in a pile of snow and just succumb to the night while I’m good and drunk? To go to sleep and maybe not even wake up? It’s gotta be a better existence than this one.

  I tell myself I need to make sure Juniper is at least warm for the night before I make any rash decisions. I grab my shovel, shaking the snow off the tip, and start feeding the pellet stove scoops of wood, watching the flames come back to life. The warmth hits my face, a puff of dusty smoke burns deep in my lungs. The fire is the only thing I need to remind me that it’s not quite time for me to go. That a lot of earth needs to be burned before I can rest.

  The flames remind me of the notion that maybe, just maybe, I was meant to serve a higher purpose. There were so many times growing up I wished for death, thinking the only thing that could save me and my mother from the horrors we faced in captivity was dying. I still have the brand on my hip to remind me every day where I came from, scars on my back that itch and flare up just when I think I can truly put everything behind me.

  I can’t let Kid down like that, even though right now I’m in this painful limbo.

  I need to make sure I keep my promise to him.

  He saved me from a fate much worse than death. The least I can do is wait for him.

  I walk back inside and turn the faucet on full blast, breathing out a sigh of relief knowing my pipes haven’t frozen over. I stick my head under the water, letting the cold wash over my face, feeling the burn of ice-cold until I can’t feel anything at all.

  I sprawl out on the peeling linoleum floor, wondering how many more days I’ll be able to talk myself off the ledge. How many more times will I be able to dig down to that place where I’m a fighter? How much harder is it going to get to stoke my inner fire? What will it take for me to be able to dream again, and not just let the night swallow me?

  8

  My back aches. My bones hurt. Juniper is basically slapping me across the face, raking her claws through my hair, and it takes me a minute to blink my eyes open and gather my bearings enough to realize where I am.

  There’s a pounding on the front door, and I take a quick mental walk through which bills I paid and which ones I thought could wait until my next paycheck. In my current condition I don’t even think I could flirt my way out of this one. I breathe into my hand, checking my breath, and it damn near knocks me back onto the ground.

  I struggle my way up the side of the kitchen cabinet
s, promising myself I’ll never drink again, and grab my bottle of peppermint schnapps from the counter, using it as a makeshift mouthwash. A low moan escapes my lips every time I take a step.

  “I’m coming!” I shout, hoping that makes the knocking stop. Every blow to the wooden door sends a shooting pain through my skull.

  I peek out the window at the pretty blonde girl standing on my porch. She’s got on this plaid fur-trimmed coat that goes all the way down to her high-heeled boots, her makeup so perfect it looks like it’s straight out of a snapchat filter. The softly falling snow sticks in her eyelashes and she looks like something out of a fucking Hallmark movie. She must be lost.

  I swing the door open. “Can you stop that please?” I ask.

  She looks me up and down briefly and then looks over my shoulder like she’s expecting someone else to be here.

  “Is Annabella here?” she asks.

  “It depends on who’s asking,” I grumble. I don’t have a lot of friends in this world, especially not the kind that look like they’re pledging for some rich bitch sorority.

  “He told me you weren’t gonna like me,” she says, pushing her way into my house. “I promise by the end of the day you will. Everybody likes me.”

  She takes off her coat and shoves it in my arms. Her giant perky boobs stretch the fabric of her sweater so far it looks like it’s about to rip in half. Her jeans are the kind with the rhinestones on the pockets, the kind that cost as much as my mortgage. I feel like an idiot because I’m too busy staring at her to throw her out the door.

  “Can I help you?” I stammer.

  “You don’t know who I am?” She bats her footlong eyelashes. “God, everybody knows who I am.”

  I stare up at the ceiling, trying to figure out who this strange bitch is. Is she some sort of local newscaster? A country singer? Am I on some sort of reality TV show where pretty blonde women show up to the boonies and make over suicidal losers? I know I drink a lot, but I don’t remember signing up for that.